XANDR the XTINGUISHER

Description

Multiple studies have found that climate change has already led to an increase in wildfire season length, wildfire frequency, and burned area. Wildfires also release massive amounts of greenhouse gasses, creating an environmental feedback loop that causes more wildfires. XANDR the XTINGUISHER is an open source modular arthropod framework designed to fight fires and do preventative forest maintenance. As an open source project, XANDR can be configured by communities for a wide range of tasks from small models that can rappel into burning buildings to larger models that can clear underbrush from forests.

The current iteration for this project is designed to be made primarily out of wood, so that it can help self replicate other bots out in the forest. Different legs and mandibles, etc, can be swapped and fabricated in the field.

Details

Robots fighting fires
modular and scalable
spider says bleep bloop

provide basic walking functionality with as few motors as possible

minimal electronics requiored for control and functionality
allow for autonomous function and remote control
modular attachment points for various tasks
buildable from wood, plastic, and metal
can carry significant payload
scalable architecture
open source

Files

frame.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 47.74 kB - 09/04/2022 at 05:29

Download

leg1.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 9.85 kB - 09/04/2022 at 05:29

Download

coxa_servo.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 45.98 kB - 09/04/2022 at 05:29

Download

coxa_edge.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 32.89 kB - 09/04/2022 at 05:29

Download

coxa_servo2.stl

Standard Tesselated Geometry - 24.69 kB - 09/04/2022 at 05:29

Download

Components

2 × 180 degree servos 25kg/cm servo for leg rotation

2 × Continuous rotation servos 35kg/cm servo for lifting legs

1 × 16 channel servo control board PCM 9685 I2C servo control board

1 × Teensy 4.0

1 × Nvidia Jetson Nano

Project Logs

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Older media
Andrew Benson • 09/21/2022 at 05:47 • 0 comments

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New vid, who this
Andrew Benson • 09/17/2022 at 23:46 • 0 comments
The itsy bitsy spider fell down the testing tree
Andrew Benson • 09/09/2022 at 08:20 • 0 comments

One of the features of the current iteration of XANDR is a quadcopter that can take off from the back of the spider and carry a hook into a tree. A small magnet allows the quadcopter to detach from the hook, and the larger spider can winch itself up the tree for branch trimming. During the first test of the system the quadcopter lost control, and took a hard dive into some nearby cement. It seems like the FPV camera was broken in the fall - hopefully the quad can be repaired without too many new parts, and the next test will be done on a tree with softer surroundings (this tree was chosen due to proximity to the shop, and thus ladders.
Servos
Andrew Benson • 09/04/2022 at 05:38 • 0 comments

I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to get the servos running off a 16 channel I2C servo board. For the requisite video it was easier to use default code than anything articulate - it is capable of doing push ups now, but has yet to walk.
Oldham, engage!
Andrew Benson • 09/04/2022 at 05:33 • 0 comments

Power coupling to the leg lift shaft is created by an oldham coupler created out of an old piece of oak flooring and glow-in-the-dark 3d printed plastic. Currently testing PLA.
prehence
Andrew Benson • 09/02/2022 at 20:00 • 0 comments

View all 6 project logs

Discussions

XANDR the XTINGUISHER

Description

Details

Robots fighting fires
modular and scalable
spider says bleep bloop